MP Kobzon hopes Duma will respond to Sochi Olympics boycott calls

“All this talk about the cancellation of the Olympic Games, let alone attempts to use the memory of Hitler’s genocide against the Jews is simply appalling”

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Photo ITAR-TASS/Alexandra Mudrats

MOSCOW, August 12 (Itar-Tass) - Russian MP Iosif Kobzon hopes that the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, will respond to calls to boycott the Olympic Games in Sochi and attempts to compare the ban on homosexual propaganda among minors with persecution of the Jews.

“All this talk about the cancellation of the Olympic Games, let alone attempts to use the memory of Hitler’s genocide against the Jews is simply appalling,” Kobzon, who is first deputy chair of the Duma Committee on Culture, said on Monday, August 12.

He thinks that when the Duma reconvenes in September for its autumn session it will address this issue and “will not allow anyone to downplay the public importance of the Olympic Games.”

In his opinion, it is “unspeakable” when one compares the genocide of a nation with a ban on homosexual propaganda. “There is no normal logic in what [actor and writer Stephen] Fry calls for,” Kobzon noted.

“We should fight drug addiction, pedophilia, alcoholism and the spread of pornography, including the propaganda of homosexual relations among minors, and we should do so all together,” the MP said. “This is what our laws are about. And our laws are not severe at all.”

He expressed confidence that the Olympic Games in Sochi in 2014 would become “a holiday of young people and sports.”